World's Strongest Woman - Wonders

When Donna Moore began competing in Strongwoman events, the results attracted the attention of a small but dedicated group of followers on Facebook groups.

More than a decade later, the three-time world champion will be in front of a crowd of 1,400 for the Britain's Strongest Woman final at the York Barbican this weekend.

Moore, 45, grew up in Colburn, near Catterick in North Yorkshire, but did not discover weightlifting until she was already a mother of two children wanting to improve her fitness.

"I started training in a normal gym at classes where there's about 30 people and you're doing aerobics or light weights, because I wasn't very confident and I didn't know anything about how to go into a gym by myself.

"I did these classes and I enjoyed it, the camaraderie between the people, and it made me want to turn up.

"When I got a little braver I went to a regular gym and learned a few different things to do. And through that journey, progressed until I got signposted to a more independent kind of gym that was focused on heavier lifting."

In the early 2000s, she would watch World's Strongest Woman and the men's competition on TV and thought the events were "really cool", but she knew little about how to enter.

"Fast forward 10-12 years, I've been hooked ever since and it's what I've been doing for the past decade."

She has 54,600 followers on Instagram and yet until recently she worked for the NHS.

She now makes a living training other women alongside her competition income.

"I wouldn't say you're able to do it as a job. I coach as my job, so it's helped me to have a job in that respect. So that's great. But no, I don't think, especially people from the UK, there are any of us who are solely competing.

"We all have other avenues to be able to compete."

In the US, strongwomen have more opportunities, and in Scandinavia the sport is more widely accepted, but things are changing in the UK – with more strongwomen gaining higher profiles.

"There's lots of people from America who are very good, in other European countries, in Scandinavia, they get it a little bit more. So it's been more prevalent for a longer time.

"But now the UK is starting to see that women being stronger is acceptable, and society's norms are changing. So that's helped the growth of the sport a lot."

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